“Beautiful eyes,” he says. “And what’s behind them?”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“What are you thinking?”
“I was thinking about how beautiful you are,” I say without missing a beat. “When you sleep, I mean. You looked so very peaceful.”
He smiles then. A real smile. His teeth are white and even. A movie star’s smile. “You’re lying,” he says cheerfully. “But that’s okay.” I start to protest but he stops me. And he is right. It is okay. My thoughts are my own.
In the morning he leaves early with the air of a man who has places to go. He drops a kiss on my forehead before he bustles out the door. I realize we haven’t made any plans and I don’t mind. I have my own plans to consider. My own future. Because, at the moment, his doesn’t look bright. I feel a pang at the place where comfort and satisfaction should be.
I stay in bed for a while after he leaves, luxuriating in the feel of the crisp hotel sheets and my own postcoital glow. I recline there, outwardly calm, while inside my brain is seething with all of these new permutations. I am processing.
I have a job to do. I’ve already been partly paid to do it. I’ve already cashed the check, as it were. And here is the reality: if I decline, he’ll still end up just as dead. It might delay things by a week or so, maybe not even that. I’m not the only hired gun around. Thinking that makes me realize something: they’d brought me a long way and from another country to do this hit. There is a reason for that. Who is this guy?
Some simple Googling brings results right away, but none that answer the question. He’d designed a Sterling engine that purified water based on a proprietary system that utilized graphene. A by-product of the purification system had been a graphene-based fuel cell that was thinner and lighter by far than any other. That had been nearly a decade ago. He is now at the head of a company that develops and implements new solutions for both of those things: water purification and alternate fuel sources. The company has been successful enough that he also heads a large nonprofit that does good work in third-world countries cleaning water and providing power. He is a good and successful guy with a social conscience and the ability to do something about it. Nothing I read about him makes me like him less. And someone wants him dead.
On the surface, there is no one obvious who might be responsible. At least, it is not obvious to me. His is a private company, so no possible takeover plans could be afoot. No enemies that I am aware of. But experience has shown me that you can never tell what it looks like inside someone else’s life.
I give some thought to sending a text, beginning a sequence, in order to find out who bought the hit, but I know even as I have this thought that it is a useless avenue. A network like the one I am part of didn’t get and stay successful by giving up sensitive information like that. It strikes me that even asking about it might put both him and my livelihood in jeopardy. Maybe even my life.
I consider my options. I can do the job I have come to do. If I do that, I will know it is tidily and properly done and he didn’t suffer. I will be humane. Not everyone in my business always is. Or I can feasibly not do the job without too much loss of face or reputation if I act quickly and bow out in a professional manner. “Something’s come up.” He’d still end up just as dead, but I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it.
I don’t love either of these options, so I toy briefly with the idea of telling him the truth, or something close to it. That there is danger here. For everyone concerned. It would expose me—and would he want to date a hit woman? Date and possibly more—it occurred to me that few would. And, in any case, his knowledge won’t protect him. Possibly nothing can.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BY THE TIME I get to the seawall, the sun is shining. It seems transformed from the night before. A different place on a sunny midday than it had been on a rainy night. There are large ocean-going vessels at anchor in the protected water of the bay while sailing vessels bob around them like ponies playing in a field and kayakers paddle near the shore like merry little birds.
The seawall itself is packed with all manner of jovial traffic. Mothers and nannies pushing strollers and taking in the air. Kids on rollerblades and skateboards gearing up to inflict injuries they’ll regret in a couple of decades. Couples holding hands and making memories to sustain them when love has died. Hairy youths followed by clouds of marijuana smoke flouting a law that is imprecise. All manner of humanity out to enjoy a rare day of Vancouver sunshine. I walk and walk and soak it in, enjoying the feeling of sunshine on my skin and the warmth that kisses the top of my head. It is a gorgeous day.
I am approaching his building when my phone rings. It is him.
“What does your day look like?” he asks.
“Looks like sunshine,” I say in truth, still walking in his direction, though he has no idea. “What a gorgeous city.”
“How would you like to see beyond it? I have to run up to Squamish to see a man about a dog. Wanna come? I figure after we could drive up to Whistler for dinner. Maybe stay the night. How does that sound?”
None of the place names have any meaning for me. It doesn’t matter.
“Do you really have to see a man about a dog?”
“I do not. It’s an expression. It’s a meeting. Won’t take long.”
“Sure. Okay. If it’s not an actual dog, that changes everything. I’m maybe half an hour, forty minutes from my hotel. So any time after that?”
“Perfect.” I can hear the smile. “I’ll pick you up from your hotel in an hour.”
By the time we end the call, I am standing outside of his office building. It looks friendlier in the sunshine, all sand-colored cornices, sunlight glinting off original glass. I stay in the shadows of the building across the street, though there are few shadows on this bright day. With a plan to see him now in place, I’m not sure what I am doing here, though, in all fairness, I hadn’t known why I was walking there in the first place. Thinking. Hard. Tossing around this and that. Knowing there are several possibilities, but really only one outcome I can see.
I trudge back to the hotel, day less bright now. Pull the Bersa out of the safe and put my belongings together. By the time he pulls up in a sleek, long car, I’ve checked out of the hotel and am sitting on a bench out front, enjoying the sunshine and waiting for him.
He tucks my suitcase into the trunk without comment. It is clear I’m not leaving anything behind. I think I catch the hint of a questioning look, but it is gone so quickly, I figure it is possible I am wrong.
We leave the city on a ribbon of highway he tells me is called the Sea-to-Sky. “It could also be called the sea-to-ski, I guess, but it’s prettier this way.”
And it is pretty. Raw young mountains, snow-kissed peaks, a picturesque sinewy oceanside that laps at the edges of the scene for what seems like a disproportionate amount of the way. Then the highway heads up into the mountains. A couple of times, my ears pop. It is lovely and I feel myself lulled, the feeling of being out of control, like a little kid, and the grown-ups are taking you on vacation; that is how I feel.
At Squamish, he has his meeting in a low office building with a nondescript façade. I find a café nearby and take my laptop with me and do some more research, trying the dark web this time and seeing if I can turn anything up that might shed some light. Still nothing. No matter how you slice it, this is a straight-up, straight-shooting, well-liked guy. He has, as he’d told me, an ex-wife. But that doesn’t look complicated, either. From all accounts, they split amicably. Facebook photos indicate mutual respect and shared parenting of two teenaged daughters. Even the daughters look well adjusted and as though they are flourishing. It would have been maddening if it weren’t all so lovely and perfect. Maybe it is both.
I am so focused on what I am doing, I don’t see him come in. As promised, he has not been long, but I hadn’t expected him quite so quickly.
“You looked so intense,” he observes. “As though what you were contemplating was life
and death.”
I opt for candor of a sort. “I was Googling you.”
“Me? Whatever for?”
“I just wondered if we had … I dunno? The right stuff.” I let my voice trail off suggestively.
He drops into the chair opposite mine.
“Right for what?” he says with a credible air of innocence.
“Exactly,” I say, deliberately obtuse.
“And what did you conclude?”
“No conclusion,” I say tartly. “And here we both are.”
“Exactly,” he says in just the way I had moments before. And the smile he gives me goes right to his eyes. “And what would I find if I were to Google you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I am an enigma.”
One eyebrow shoots up, but he doesn’t say anything.
“A cipher,” I add. “It might be that I don’t exist at all.”
“A cipher. An enigma. Those are interesting ways to describe oneself. And, if that is the case, how is it that this cipheric—”
“I don’t think that’s a word.”
“—enigmatic woman should come into my life? What message does that bring?”
“That would be an arrogant way to frame things,” I say, smiling brightly and hoping he doesn’t see how close to the mark he’s come.
To my relief, he laughs.
“It would, wouldn’t it? Of course. Everything is about me!”
“But all our worlds are, aren’t they?”
“I guess they are. Never mind. Let’s get back on the road. We’ve still got nearly an hour of driving before dinner.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not hungry at all.”
“You could be by the time we get there, right?”
“It could happen.”
The big black car slips along the highway soundlessly for a while before I chance the question I’ve been framing. It seems a risk worth taking.
“If someone were going to kill you, who would it be?” I say, as conversationally as I can manage.
He looks at me quickly before pulling his eyes back to the road.
“That’s a weird question.”
“Right?”
He laughs. I’m not sure if I hear an uneasy note, though I listen closely for it.
“Okay,” he says. “You first.”
“Me first what?”
“Kill you. Who?”
“Me?” I say. He’s taken me by surprise. He does that a lot. “Well … I’d have to think.”
“That’s what I’m doing. My turning it around was a stall tactic.”
“Ah.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested. Go ahead and answer.”
“Well … there might be too many to count,” I say truthfully. “But they wouldn’t know my name.”
“Well, it would seem you are safe then.”
“Yes, that’s right. It would seem so.”
“So no one in particular?” he asks. “Your ex?”
“No. He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t realize you were a widow.”
“That’s okay.” My response is almost automatic. In this moment almost not remembering the man who had been my husband. Something about an accident. Something about a hospital bed. I put it from my mind. “Sometimes I barely remember myself.”
“Children?”
“No,” I say, turning my head quickly, something near my heart I don’t want him to see. I watch the darkening scenery for a while. We are powering through a forest. The trees going by so fast, they are a solid blur of brown and green.
We are quiet for a while. A companionable enough silence. Though when he speaks, it is like there has been no interruption.
“Honestly, I don’t think there is anyone who would want me dead. I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know if that means I’ve lived an exemplary life or if I’m just too vanilla.”
I think before answering. And then, “Maybe neither. Maybe something entirely different is true.”
“I think most people go through their whole lives without anyone ever trying to kill them,” he says, deadpan.
“You say that based on what?”
He laughs. “I don’t know. The number of people running around not dead?”
“So not your ex-wife?”
“We’re still on the kill me thing?”
I grunt.
“Because that’s a weird tack for a girlfriend to take.”
I consider. And then, “I’m not your girlfriend.”
“Okay then.” he says, only slightly abashed. “But not my ex. No. We get along very well, and our arrangement suits both of us. And she’s well compensated. It’s possible she’d get less money if someone offed me.”
“Well that’s good. No one wants to sit around wondering if their ex is thinking about putting a knife in their back.”
“Exactly. So do I pass?”
“Pass what?”
“Well, I don’t know. It felt like some kind of courtship test. I wanted to know how I did.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re too competitive?”
“All the bloody time.” He pats the steering wheel. “How else do you think I ended up with the big Tesla?”
“You play to win.” It’s not a question.
“Always.”
He is slowing, pulling into the village. We are months from ski season, but there are still scads of people around. At a glance, it’s the sort of Alpine-village-meets-Rodeo-Drive motif that seems to have something for everyone year-round.
He checks us into a suite at a hotel that has “Chateau” in the name. The place is like a wintery castle: all grand height ceilings and old money finishing. Tapestries on the wall. Candelabras. All the comforts of home.
Our suite is like an elegant little house. The room we’d spent the night before in would fit into one corner with space for a yard.
“If this is how you usually roll, you must have thought the Sylvia was a dump.”
“The Sylvia is not a dump. It’s charming. A boutique hotel.”
“Still.”
“Yeah, this place is pretty sweet. I’m glad you provided me with the excuse to spend the night.”
“I did?”
I am sitting on the edge of the bed, my legs dangling. He bends down, one hand on either side of where my butt meets the bed, and kisses me fully. “You did,” he says when he comes up for air. “I would have had my meeting in Squamish and then gone back to the city.” He collapses in an elegant heap next to me, touches my collarbone gently with his index finger. “But I wanted some of this.”
I lean into him, and when he stands suddenly, I am disappointed. It is unexpected. I see him see that in my face and he smiles. “Look,” he says, “we’d better go eat or we won’t get out of here.”
“They don’t have room service in this dump?”
“They do. But I have someplace in mind.”
Walking around the village, I see it is even more charming and unreal than I’d suspected from the car. Disney does a ski village. Everyone is wearing Lululemon with their Versace and there are quaint little shops, trendy bars, and lovely eateries in block after block. See and be seen. He leads me into one of these.
The food is exceptional yet somehow not memorable, though the wine is much better than what we’d had at the hotel bar the night before. Something from an extensive wine list that he ponders knowledgeably for several minutes before making his choice. Thankfully, conversation between us is as engaging as ever. It is easy to talk with him. No uncertain pauses or painful holes. I am easy with him. As close to myself as is possible for me. I’d forgotten this me existed.
We walk back to the hotel hand in hand, sharing jokes and easy conversation. In that walk, a shaft of pure happiness comes to me. I don’t remember ever feeling anything quite like it. Just this moment filled with nothing but what is right here, in front of me. For the first time in my recollection, everything I have is enough. And maybe I a
m enough, too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BACK AT THE hotel, we make love sweetly, then fall asleep in each other’s arms. And here, too, there is this feeling of massive content. Other thoughts try to crowd in, but somehow, I keep them at bay.
Just a little longer, I plead with no one at all. Just let me feel this a bit longer. I’ll figure things out later, but right now let me have this.
In the morning, he leads me to the bathroom. Somehow when I was sleeping, he had filled the tub with bubbles. They smell both exotic and expensive. They smell like you could lose yourself in there. Forever.
He scoops me off my feet so easily, it makes my head swim. Then he lowers me gently into the softly scented water. He doesn’t speak, nor do I, but he drops to his knees next to the tub and begins to wash me. There are no words, just sensuous motions, but they are serious ones, as well. I can tell from how he approaches it that I’ll be clean when he’s done.
He washes my hair. No one outside of a salon has ever washed my hair before. He does it carefully, making sure none of the rich shampoo drips into my eyes or even down my forehead. Then he rinses me, head to toe, still silent. Drains the tub. Lifts me out and dries me with a huge, rough towel. He dries every piece of me, as one would a child, until I am standing there, my skin glowing from his efforts.
Now he lifts me again, carries me back to the bedroom, places me gently back on my spot on the bed, then snuggles his form next to mine, our curves joining as sweetly as though they have been designed that way.
“So what now?” he says, tracing the curve of my arm with his finger. It’s the first time he has spoken in a while. Neither of us have. And the sound of the words seems almost musical in the silent hotel suite.
“I don’t have a plan.”
“You checked out of your hotel.” It’s not a question.
“Yes,” I say.
“How long are you in town?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’ll come and stay with me.”
“All right.”
We do the drive in reverse and it is just as beautiful as it was the day before, only now we are holding hands as we drive, or his right hand plays through my hair while I lightly touch his thigh or the back of his neck. We are never far from touching, like each of us is afraid the other will disappear if we lose contact for more than a few moments. It makes a difference.
Endings Page 6